To Give Love Its Due
by Finch
Summary: Silmarillion-based. Part 5 in the Finrod Felagund cycle. Finrod returns from the Halls of Mandos. 2 Chapters.
1. Default Chapter

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TO GIVE LOVE ITS DUE, Chapter 1

Finrod Felagund cycle, Part 5 

Based on the Silmarillion, the History of Middle-earth, and on Deborah's interpretation of the Statute of Finwë and Míriel (which I find increasingly appealing). 

Disclaimer: Almost all characters and names belong to Tolkien.

At first he had little eye for his surroundings, though his eyes were as new as the rest of him. No gift more precious than life. To sense and feel again: the soft turf under his feet, the gentle breeze in his hair, the sun on his skin, the rise and fall of his chest, the song of his blood, the beating of his heart. His soaring heart.

The joy was fresh. He had not expected to be so graced, for he had erred, and died in the depths of darkness. Peace he had sought and found, a long rest from long sorrows; grief and regret waste the soul as wounds and venom waste the flesh of those who dwell on mortal shores. But he had expected correction as well: for pride, stubbornness and folly, and for the failure to grasp the real extent of evil in time, to see that you cannot truly fight what you have not truly fathomed. 

__

'You saw all this before you came to me,' the Judge had said. _'How can I teach you what you know? You may leave my Halls, if you are at peace.'_

'What did I do to be granted release?'

'You will know, that, too.'

And so, he had left, in a body both familiar and strange, familiar because it remembered the pain it had suffered, and strange because it did not feel the hurt, as its members were light and light was the heart of it. 

He was Findaráto, son of Finarfin and Eärwen. Finrod Felagund. Finrod the Faithful, Friend of Men. He had kept faith and clung to hope, enabling Beren to win a Silmaril, and now - he laughed at the thought - he felt almost as if he were a Silmaril himself - but a living one that was no prison to the light it held; he would not begrudge himself to anyone. 

He also remembered that he was the husband of Amarië of the Vanyar, for he had joined himself to her in his first life. 

Now he looked about, his eyes recovering the familiar: the blue sky overhead and the green of the grass and the bushes around him were the very images of blue and green, the yellow and white of spring flowers a true yellow and white. The air was rich with birdsong, the breath of Manwe Sulimo whispered in his ears. No blemish, no discord, no decay, and everything at one with itself.

But is not that what you wish for, it crossed his mind, rather than what you know to be so? The discords of Melkor are contained in the Music of the Ainur. The sunshine is a lesser thing than the light of the Trees you knew of old. Many will not leave the Halls, and among them your own brother. Do not forget that Arda remains marred.

Amarië would dwell with her own people, he supposed. The Vanyar lived no more in Tirion but on the slopes of Mount Taniquetil, or about the plains and woods at its feet. It was a long journey, but his new body was as strong and tireless as his old had ever been. He passed by the Lake of Lorellin and the mansions of Aulë. From a great distance he beheld the lamps of the Mindon Eldaliéva on the Hill of Tuna, brightening the twilight. Yet driven by the memory of his love, his wife, he kept his course.

Before he came to the dwellings of the Vanyar he heard the tidings: Morgoth Bauglir had been defeated and cast through the Door of Night into the Timeless Void. But even that victory was marred, for the last surviving sons of Fëanor had stolen the remaining Silmarils. Now they were lost, for Maglor had cast one in the Sea and Maedhros had thrown himself into the abyss with the other. 

Finrod mourned for his cousins, whereas the loss of the jewels meant little to him. They were cursed, they had caused too much pain, linked as they were to a terrible Oath that only Ilúvatar could undo. And his own light, encased in his living flesh, sufficed for him. He even found himself consoling some of the Vanyar - a strange thing, as he had always used to think of them as more enlightened than he was. Was it not enough, he asked, that the Silmaril of Beren and Lúthien had been hallowed by the Valar, to shine at dawn as a token of faith in the coming day, and at dusk as a token of hope for the coming night?* Had Fëanor not erred when he imprisoned the brilliance of the Trees, wanting to possess it for himself - and thereby proving to the world that nothing brings out flaws like light does? Should light be locked inside an object that could be put away from sight? It was good that the jewels were now out out of reach. And, finally, if Eonwë himself had not slain the robbers but allowed them to take the jewels, why bewail the theft, rather than misery of the thieves? 

So he said. He did not mind that some of them looked doubtfully, but after a while, it began to trouble him that none of the Vanyarin Elves could tell him where Amarië dwelled. Even her name stirred but the vaguest recollections. Once, there had been a lady by that name, kin to Elenwë, the spouse of Turgon, who had joined the Rebellion. Elenwë abode in the Halls of Mandos, loath to leave them without her husband, who would not so swiftly find release.

But the fate of Amarië was unknown to them, alas. 

When they heard he was Turgon's cousin and a Noldo despite his golden hair they grew more reserved, though they remained respectful towards one twice embodied. In the end Finrod went on alone, roaming the lands west of Mount Everwhite, thinking that he should have looked for Amarië in the tapestries of Vairë on the walls of Mandos**. Why had he forgotten to do so? Had he been too surprised at being released, too eager to be gone? 

Then, just as he feared it was still possible to run out of joy and light even for the healed and renewed, he met another lonely wanderer in the woods. The figure was clad in grey and his appearance was that of the Children of Ilúvatar, yet by the depth of his gaze Finrod knew he was more. He halted, waiting for the other to address him.

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'Greetings, wanderer in the woods,' the grey-clad figure spoke into his mind. _'Have you perchance lost your way? For you look less blissful than you should, for one who has so recently regained his body.' _

'Greetings, clear-sighted one,' Finrod replied. _'Indeed I seem to have lost the way to my love, and this mars my happiness._'

The Maia eyed him gravely. _'How did you come to lose it?_'

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'The first time most certainly for want of wisdom. The second time...' Finrod paused, and a new thought struck him, _'the second time for fear what I may find?' _

Now the other's eyes sparkled. _'Which tells me, son of Finarfin, that in the mean time you managed to acquire some wisdom at least.'_

Finrod laughed. He knew full well that it was the one standing before him who freed the awareness of his own apprehension from the confines of his heart. His sole merit lay in having acknowledged it. _'It was a gift, I think. Will I find Amarië if I face my fear?_'

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'It may take more than that to find her back,' the Maia replied. _'But if you walk straight to the east and cross the stream, you will come upon a house at the edge of a wood where a _nís _and a _nér_ live alone, apart from their kin. Speak with both of them, and you may yet find your destination.'_

Touching the brim of his hat he walked straight to the west. After a few moments, Finrod headed in the opposite direction. He was not at all surprised to find the grey figure gone when he looked back.

The stream was too broad to jump, and crossing it left his feet wet. He ignored it, for the words of the Maia occupied his mind. A woman and a man. Speak with both. It did nothing to allay his apprehension. It was late afternoon; the dust motes of Arda danced in the sunbeams slanting through the gaps in the forest roof. How far to go? How far to wonder?

He saw them before he reached the edge of the trees and the house, and without thinking he slipped behind a bush. She was sitting on a boulder, looking up at him; he stood with his face turned towards hers, showing her something he held in his hand. It was an odd-shaped piece of rock such as a stone-carver might pick up because he could see a shape hidden inside it, Finrod thought fleetingly. They were both golden-haired Vanyar, his hair a slightly darker hue than hers. And the woman was Amarië.

His heart lurched, for she looked and felt even lovelier than he had expected - which was strange, as beauty remembered tends to increase with distance. But all the loveliness in her was meant for the man standing before her. The loveliness, and, plain to see from where he was hiding, the love. 

Finrod had not known it was possible to feel such a keen sense of loss so shortly after his recovery of life and the waking world. 

He recalled the day he had left to follow Fëanor to the mortal shores: Amarië coming to him in his room, their exchange of vows, their lovemaking, as intense as it was ill-timed. And then he had left. He had taken her, and left her, and failed to turn back when Mandos doomed the Noldor. He had passed willingly under the Shadow, and though not a day had gone by that had not found him thinking of her with undiminished love, to her it must have been different.

After the Prophecy of the North, it must have felt like nothing less than betrayal.

Which, of course, it was.

Those who wed share the mastery over themselves with their spouses. Yet he, Finrod, a son of the repentant Finarfin, had one-sidedly defied the Curse of Mandos, condemning Amarië to loneliness and emptiness. For what could she hope for? That he, of all people, would escape the inexorable doom, escape being slain, escape the long atonement in the Houses of the Dead, perhaps until the very End? So, feeling thus betrayed, she had appealed to the Valar. They had mercifully released her from her vows. And another had taken his place, for she did not deserve to remain alone.

He shook his head. If that were true, surely Mandos would have kept him in his Halls? _For none among the Quendi shall have two spouses at on time alive and awake. _Or so the Statute went. Had it been revoked? Could Fëanor have misunderstood it when he wrote it down, so long ago in the Noontide of Valinor?***

Or had she had taken a lover against all that was right and proper - she, the same Amarië of the Vanyar whose love of the Valar was so great that she had adamantly refused to leave the Blessed Realm together with him? It seemed unthinkable, and yet... These two lived apart from their kin, the Maia had told him. As outcasts? Again, Finrod looked at them. They sat side by side on the boulder now. Amarië was holding the stone, tracing its outline with her finger. His heart knew that she was happy, and his chest tightened. 

Perhaps he should leave. Perhaps he had been allowed to depart from the Houses of the Dead because this was a thing he needed to learn by experience: that one could repent the past, that it was possible to attain forgiveness, but that not one thread of Vairë's tapestries could be unravelled in Time. 

He turned to leave. But he did it too abruptly, for the bushes around him stirred, and his presence was noticed. 'Who goes there?' Amairë's companion called out.

(TBC)

*Not canonical, perhaps, but it appeals to my love of symmetry. 

**Vairë, the wife of Mandos, 'weaves all things that have ever been in Time into her storied webs, and the halls of Mandos that ever widen as the ages pass are clothed with them.' Sil., p. 28. I have assumed it is possible for those leaving the Halls to take a look at them, but as far as I know this is nowhere attested.

***The _Earliest version of the story of Finwë and Míriel_, HoMe, Volume 10, Morgoth's Ring. As I think this statute is unnecessary harsh (and Nienna seems to be of the same opinion), I am indebted to Deborah for her suggestion it represents Fëanor's personal understanding of the meaning of marriage vows - which means it doesn't necessarily have the status of dogma.


	2. Chapter 2

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TO GIVE LOVE ITS DUE, Chapter 2 and last

Finrod decided to show himself rather than to leave. Come what may, Amarië had a right to know he was back. Slowly he walked towards them. 

She recognised him at once, and quickly she stood, straightening, holding herself rigidly erect. Her companion also rose to his feet; he appeared to be quite young still. His eyes went wide when Amarië said, her voice not quite steady: 'Findaráto?'

Leaving a few steps between them, Finrod halted. 'Amarië.'

She looked from him to her companion, who eyed them both intently, almost avidly, his lips slightly parted. Something seemed to pass between the two, a silent message from mind to mind. Suddenly the younger Elf announced: 'I think I shall return home. No doubt you wish to speak in private.'

'We do,' was all she said, returning the piece of rock to him. He took it and left, glancing back twice before he melted into the woods. 

They stared at each other for a while. 'Who is he?' Finrod finally asked, when she did not speak. If she felt guilty about anything, she hid it well. Her mind remained closed.

'Ingalaurë,' she replied, as if the name was the answer, and as it meant 'Gold on top', perhaps it was. 

But he could not be sure. 'A kinsman of Ingwë?' he inquired. The Vanyarin King and his kin had always been beyond reproach. But true enough he had not been able to discern any taint in the soul of the younger Elf. 

'He is, though not very close,' Amarië replied. 

'You must have been furious at me, when you heard about the Curse of Mandos,' Finrod said after a renewed silence. 

'I was aghast. I felt you had undone me. But...,' and she took a deep breath, 'the feeling passed.'

'Because you found a new love?'

'Because I found a new love.' 

He could see that her eyes were brimming. She had not done it lightly, then, and if it had saved her from becoming embittered... 'How long did you wait?' he asked. 

'It was a year after your departure that I first held him in my arms,' she replied, an edge to her voice now, as if she meant to pay him back the hurt.

Not long after the Curse, then. But as if this answer was all he needed, at that very instant the shadow inside him began to lift and he felt himself grow light again. 'Forgive me, Amarië,' he said. 'I wronged you. I was unworthy of you, and I accept the consequences.'

She shook her head. 'Some guilt is mutual. How perfect is a love that is willing to share the known world, but balks at the unknown? If I had followed you from the outset, I might have persuaded you to turn back after the Kinslaying. I will forgive you if you forgive me - and then, maybe, we can share the consequences.'

He smiled faintly. 'Maybe we can.'

'Will you follow me home, then?'

'I will.'

On their way there, they spoke about distant things, things that concerned the larger tapestries of history rather than their own private warp and weft. Amarië asked him if he had seen his parents yet, and he told her he had sought her out first. 'Do not let them wait much longer,' she told him, and Finrod nodded: it was undeniably good counsel. 

The house at the edge of the trees was as modest as could be, but it had two gardens: a vegetable garden, and one filled with the most beautiful flowers. Briefly but proudly Amarië pointed at those she had cultivated; some of them had new and unusual colours, others had shapes Finrod had never seen before, and he was genuinely curious to learn how she had achieved this. 

But not just yet. 'Where is Ingalaurë?' he asked when they entered the house and the younger Elf was not in the main room.

'In his workroom, probably,' Amarië answered.

'I would speak to him.' Finrod hesitated. 'Alone, if you do not mind.'

She eyed him steadily. 'Is there a reason why I should mind?'

Slightly amused, he shook his head. 'Not that I am aware of.'

He had already figured out what kind of workroom to expect, and he turned out to be right. It was the room of a stone-carver, or rather, a sculptor. A rare occupation for a Vanya, but being part Noldo Finrod felt immediately at home.

Ingalaurë was sitting on a stool, a soft glow about him, not unlike that of Isil in a summer night, though his hair seemed to reflect the light of Anar, and both mingled in his face. When Finrod entered he lifted his gaze from the piece of rock resting in his right palm, but he remained silent. Obviously, he waited for his visitor to speak first. 

Finrod did not immediately do so. Instead, he looked about the room, his eyes taking in all the pieces of craftsmanship they saw. He knew himself to be the best of stone-carvers, and the pride he used to feel in the Dwarvish name Felagund, Hewer of Caves, had withstood all exercises in humility in Mandos's Halls; one does not play down a gift. And though he could see there were a few things this artist could learn from him, it was certainly not for lack of skill or talent. If, as he suspected, Ingalaurë was self-taught, his was a rare mastery indeed. 

He picked up a half-finished statuette of a ferocious looking feline; only the front half of the beast had been freed from the chunk of black stone to leap at its absent prey. But then he saw that the animal could never be more finished than it was. The rest of its sinuous body was clearly visible in and even through the stone, seeming to stretch and move, for eyes perceptive enough to discern it. And those, he knew, where the eyes that mattered. 'Well done,' he said, turning towards the younger Elf.

Ingalaurë inclined his head in acknowledgement, a measured nod. 'Thank you.'

Finrod put down the feline to continue his inspection. Presently, his gaze fell on a small, stone bird sitting on a shelf slightly below eye-level. He took it in his hands. It was clearly the work of a child, and a none too patient child at that. 'Did you carve this when you were young?' he asked, though he knew the answer well enough.

'Not I,' said Ingalaurë. 'But it is my favourite piece.' His mouth worked as if he wanted to say more, but he seemed to change his mind.

Shaking his head, Finrod put the bird back. 'I have made far better things since.' He took a deep breath . 'Did your mother find this in my room in Tirion?' 

The implication of his words took three heartbeats to sink in. Then, Ingalaurë rose abruptly, upsetting his stool. The uncertainty on his face vanished, but he did not step forward to close the distance between them. 'So she told you?'

'She said something that tore the veil from my eyes.' No gift more precious than life - both the second life and the first, that of the newly born... For one supposed to have been instructed in Mandos's Halls he had been as dense as the woods of Oromë, Finrod mused, but he was not so witless that he did not know how long a pregnancy lasted. _It was a year after your departure that I first held him in my arms_, Amarië had said. Not a lover, but the infant that was his son. 

A son who visibly yearned to shed his reserves towards his father but who would not do so unless one more thing was said. It was considered bad if a wedded pair were sundered during the bearing of a child, or while the first years of its childhood lasted, or both, as was the case here. He guessed now that Amarië's kin had looked askance at her, that she had withdrawn to this place in order to avoid embarrassment and maybe even cold shoulders. But both of them were responsible for this sundering; in a fateful mixture of concert and discord they had robbed their son of his father and his rightful place among his kin. The account between mother and son was no doubt settled by now; the other one was still open. 

'Ingalaurë,' Finrod said, 'I deeply regret that I was not there when you were carried, born and raised, and for withholding from you what should have been yours.' 

'Having no father was hard, at times,' his son said gravely. 'Especially when they called you a Kinslayer. I never believed you were. Still, you were not there to reassure me.'

'Whatever I did, or did not, I was not innocent. What I need and beg for, is your forgiveness.' But while he said it Finrod smiled, suddenly aware that he would be able to take every blame, suffer every reproach, and still rejoice in his new-found blessing, his new-found love. This had to be the reason why Mandos the Justice had set him free: not for any merit of his own, whatever he might have done - but to give love its due. 

His son seemed to see something remarkable in him, for his eyes went wide. 

'Have I sprouted wings?' Finrod inquired, mildly curious.

Ingalaurë shook his had in wonderment. 'No. But you looked...' He chuckled. 'For a moment, I thought you shone like the sun.' 

'That, Annafinwë, must have been a reflection.'

'Why do you call me Annafinwë?' 

'Do not tell me you never wanted a father-name,' Finrod replied. 

His son did not answer, nor did he speak any words of forgiveness, but it was enough that of the two of them, he was the first to held out his arms. 

Later, they sat side by side on a bench in the garden, Amarië and he. 

'Why did you not tell me you chose to conceive?' he asked quietly.

'Because it would have been pressure. I wanted to stay of your own accord,' she replied equally softly. 'But if you were going to leave and I could not stop you by mere pleading, I wanted to cherish something of you that was more than a fair memory.' 

'Did I make life very difficult for you by leaving? Have you been very lonely?'

She was silent for a while before she answered: 'They shunned me, blaming me for bearing a child to a Kinslayer - for that was how they saw you, even though you did not lift a finger agains your mother's people.'

'I will have to set things right with your kin, then.'

She smiled. 'That can wait. As for loneliness... I have a son in my house, haven't I? And I have a... friend who visits me occasionally. He has taught Ingalaurë much, or your son might not have turned out like he did.'

'A friend?' He chuckled. 'You mean Olórin?'

'You met him?'

'He put me onto the right track.'

'Yes,' Amarië said pensively. 'He has a way of doing that.'

A renewed, peaceful silence filled the garden, and the evening scent of flowers enveloped them. 

'Finrod,' she began, 'there is much you have to tell me, but what I am most curious about is... does a second body feel different in any way?'

They had shifted position on the bench, faces turned towards each other like mirror images.

Finrod thought for a while. 'It would be easier to tell,' he replied finally, 'if I remembered exactly how the first one felt.'

Amarië's eyes sparkled. 'I have a fairly good memory,' she said. 'Do you want me to aid yours?'

It was not really a question, of course. And so, instead of replying, Finrod gathered her into his arms.

Notes:

For Elvish pregnancy, childbearing and - rearing, also see HoMe, Volume 10, Laws and customs among the Eldar. 

As for Finrod having a son: this may seem uncanonical, but in _The Parentage of Gil-galad_ (Shibboleth of Fëanor, HoMe, Volume 12, The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 349-361) I found the remark: 'Finrod left his wife in Valinor and had no children in exile,' a sentence dating back to 1965. Now if Finrod had no children at all in either Middle-earth or Valinor, the addition 'in exile' seems superfluous. That's why I felt justified to attribute at least one son to him. And I prefer this version, in which he doesn't discover the existence of his offspring until he returns from the Halls of Mandos, to a more disturbing one which would make him leave not just a wife but an entire family in order to follow Fëanor to Middle-earth.

The Quenya name Ingalaurë becomes Inglor in Sindarin. As Inglorion means 'son of Inglor', perhaps this sheds some light on the identity of Gildor Inglorion from _The Lord of the Rings... _

Anna, finally, means 'gift'.


End file.
